Edward Morgan Forster lived most of his life in England, but traveled extensively during the 1910s and 20s, mainly in Egypt and India. He is probably best known today for the one novel he wrote about India, A Passage to India, though at the time this novel was considered somewhat of a departure from his earlier, widely successful novels based in England itself, including A Room With a View, Howards End, and Where Angels Fear to Tread.

Indian readers have certainly been highly conscious of the novel – some love it, while others have problems with the way Forster represents Indian culture and society. What isn’t debated is how seriously Forster took the problem of race and racism in India under the British colonial government (or the “British Raj” as it is sometimes described). Unlike Graham Greene and Joseph Conrad, for whom Africa is often just a background for European characters, Forster focuses directly on the problem of relations between Indians and the British in India.
 

Forster was close to many of the movers and shakers in the British modernist literary scene, though his novels have been considered somewhat traditional in comparison to some of his peers (Virginia Woolf, James Joyce). It might also be important to note that Forster was gay – though he was never ‘out’ during his lifetime. Some scholars have in recent years, looked for homosexual themes in Forster’s works, including A Passage to India. These are debatable, but even if we decide not to focus on that aspect of his biography, it does seem clear that Forster’s strong emotional attachment to Egyptian and Indian men he knew probably made a difference in how well he portrayed those societies in his fiction. 

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A Passage to India was a bestseller and made a major impact when it was first published in 1924. It has been especially influential in shaping the western image of colonial India, and for its sensitive and realistic portrayal of Indian characters. He wasn’t the first; many earlier British novelists had introduced Indian characters in their works, including especially Rudyard Kipling (whose novel Kim is considered a masterpiece), Arthur Conan Doyle (author of the “Sherlock Holmes” mysteries), Wilkie Collins (The Moonstone), and Flora Annie Steel (a highly successful novelist largely forgotten today). But usually the Indians came in as minor figures, shifty villains, or stereotypes of the “Guru.” (Some Indian critics of A Passage to India have claimed that, though Forster may be better than some of his peers, there are still stereotypes in this novel as well – something for the reader to judge). 

Forster's A Passage to India is based on Forster’s two trips to India, one of which occurred in 1912, and the second of which occurred in 1921-1922. The second trip was longer and more meaningful, and probably gave Forster much of the material that makes up A Passage to India. He had a number of Indian friends, including one he had somewhat of a romantic interest in. But through them he gained a good sense of what young Indians were interested in, and how they felt about the British at the time.